The Return of Ethan
by bhut
Summary: Post S5: Ethan is back and is determined to do what he does best: spread anarchy and death all around him. Will the ARC crew be able to stop him? And where's Danny?
1. Chapter 1

**The Return of Ethan (part 1)**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

_Note: this story contains spoilers for the official series._

South-East Asia, 500,000 yrs ago

Danny Quinn was stalking through the dense jungle, his trusty – and heavy – stick Molly thrust out in front of him, his eyes and ears (and even his nose) on the high alert.

Danny Quinn was stalking. He was stalking his brother, Patrick, whom he met once again in the 21st-century, then lost in the Pliocene, then briefly regained him in the Jurassic, and now, having come to the Pleistocene epoch, has almost, but not quite, lost him again.

"Patrick, where are you?" Danny muttered quietly to himself. "Come on, please, stop this foolishness and let's go home!"

"That's what you think," Patrick suddenly replied from somewhere not far away, but up in a tree, apparently.

And then there was the sound of a shot.

Birds, bats and insects flew away at this sudden, harsh sound, but not too far, unlike the modern times: they did not know yet what that sound was, nor that they should be afraid of it.

And well, actually, they did not – this time it was not the case of a man shooting an animal, it was a case of a man shooting man.

/ / /

When Danny regained his senses, he was alive, through one of his legs throbbed from pain and he was tied up, with Molly out of his reach. On the other hand, his brother was right there, looking rather smug and gloating, with a rather crude-looking rifle in his hands.

"What's that?" Danny asked, nodding his hand in the direction of the rifle.

"That, brother, is a Lee-Enfield rifle," Patrick replied in a still smug tone. "Never liked it – was always more of a revolver man, but this occasion called for a more long-distance weapon than a Webley, you know?"

"Yes, brother, it has," Danny agreed solemnly, unwilling to argue with Patrick over something that was trivial to both of them. "Are you ready to go home now?"

Smugness slid off Ethan like grease slides off the water. "You idiot, you smug, self-righteous, idiot!" he shouted, before abruptly shifting into a more contemplative mood. "Tell me, brother, have you ever been to Africa?"

"Yes," Danny said before he could really think about it. "It was a long time ago. A madwoman planned to destroy the humanity by killing-off our ancestors. I was there to stop her." He fell silent, seeing how something changed in Patrick's eyes, and not necessarily for the better.

"It was _you_?" a new, hissing tone appeared in Patrick's voice. "It was you who just left that woman to rot to the contrary of all that our father has taught us? And after this, you dare to chase me around, quoting quasi-Biblical lines as if you were man of the cloth just as he was? You misbegotten impotent hypocrite!" He cast away the Lee-Enfield and pulled out a revolver – the Webley he had mentioned earlier. "I suppose I should thank you for helping me make this decision that much easier, but I won't be grateful. Instead, I honestly wish that you rot here for a long, long time!"

There was another shot, but the local wildlife did not panic so much this time: they already got used somewhat to the loud sound, and none of them was shot, after all.

No, this time it was yet another incident of man shooting man.

_End part 1_


	2. Chapter 2

**The Return of Ethan (part 2)**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

_Note: this story contains spoilers for the official series._

London, the present time

The mood of the ARC crew was rather high, if truth was to be told: they have defeated the latest version of the future predators and stopped Helen's last (hopefully) plan to destroy humanity, this using New Dawn ™ Corporation as her puppet. In short, the world (and humanity) was safe.

For now.

"So, anyone has any ideas where this time anomaly that we're going to be dealing with leads?" Connor asked brightly. "Come on, any guesses? They all have a 50-50 chance of succeeding, you know?"

"The Cretaceous, then," Becker, surprisingly, took up the challenge.

"Oh?" Connor asked, half-surprised and half-pleased that at least someone was willing to play along. "Why?"

"'Cause that's where we shove the T-Rex," Becker said firmly.

"Oh yeah – how _did_ you do it?"

Several hours earlier

The tyrannosaurus just lay there, not quite like a giant, ungainly bird and not quite like a giant, misshapen crocodile, but a bit of both, actually. Well, not just a bit – more like a lot, but like both a bird and crocodile all the same.

"All right, people, let's get it tied up!" Becker commanded, doing his best to ignore the havoc that was going on around them in the streets. _Philip Burton is a moron – just how exactly the closure of all the anomalies will make all the animals go away, seriously?_ "We don't want Rex to recover before we have it under control, right?"

"Yes sir!" Becker's men replied and began to chain the tyrant lizard king.

It was then that Murphy struck, by waking up the dinosaur – just as the first of the soldiers approached its muzzle. Despite its large bulk, the dinosaur opened its eyes and jaws and slid forwards on its' belly so quickly that no one had time to react before the giant jaws snapped shut and the man was gone.

Instantly, the others fired, but it was too late, as the tyrannosaurus stood up, and the shots went wide – and then the dinosaur went on the counteroffensive, by stomping with its huge feet, and at least one of the humans ended up trampled to death.

"Aim better before firing!" Becker yelled as the tyrannosaurus roared its challenge... and was answered, to everyone's surprise, the dinosaur's included.

Admittedly, the challenge was much more high-pitched and it sounded just different from the tyrannosaur's, but _was_ a challenge, and it came from a smaller, more greenish, carnivorous dinosaur that stood behind Becker and his men.

The effect on the original tyrannosaurus was instantaneous and frightening: it ruffled its scaled, emitted a sound that was half a bellow and half a snarl, and its' eyes outright lit up before it charged at the newcomer, which, naturally, fled, because size for size, it was no match for the T-Rex.

Both dinosaurs, the pursuer and the pursued, fled down a side street, and several moments later there was the sound of a time anomaly closing shut.

Now

"Whoa, that's what really happened with the T-Rex?" Abby whispered in awe. "You were so lucky!"

"Yes, lost several of my men to one dinosaur and not even managed to lay a blow on it," Becker said crossly. "Connor, what are you muttering about?"

"Trying to figure out what the second dinosaur might've been," Connor admitted. "So far I'm leaning towards the opinion that it was another T-Rex, only a juvenile, while Matt's specimen was an adult."

"Of course it was, as if anyone's interested, wise guy," Becker replied crossly, before switching to the comm.-link. "Jess, what have you got for us?"

"Well, you should be right where it was – it has closed by now," Jess's voice responded very quickly, implying that she was watching the progress of the ARC field team very closely. Well, considering that after the New Dawn™ incident she did almost lose them, this was understandable after all.

"Well, I guess that all we have to do is to make a patrol sweep in case anything has come through and decided to stay behind instead," Connor said brightly, as he and the others got out of their cars. "Hopefully it won't be another T-Rex, eh?"

"No. It's me." Patrick Quinn, better known in the 21st century as Ethan Dombrowski, emerged from the doorway of a nearby building. "We meet again, I see."

"Ethan... Patrick... whatever your name is... where's Danny?" Abby snapped.

"Dead. I killed him," Ethan said, his voice and facial expression strangely listless. "I shot him and left him to rot, the mammoth hypocrite!"

"What? He loved you, he believed in you," Abby snarled as she lifted her EMP to fire. "He was the only one-"

"Bored now," Ethan replied, still placidly, as he pulled up his own weapon – a remote control. "Good bye now."

It was a really good thing that everyone, even Connor and Emily, had very good field reflexes, and scattered into several directions even as Ethan pressed the button on his remote control... and the sides of the street where the field team's car was parked, exploded into shrapnel.

...When Becker and Abby (they had run towards the opposite side of the street from the other three) finally recovered and looked up, the neighbourhood was severely devastated, and Ethan Dombrowski had vanished.

_End Part 2_


	3. Chapter 3

**The Return of Ethan (part 3)**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

South-East Asia, 500,000 yrs ago

Danny Quinn was delirious from pain and blood loss: his brother really knew what he was doing, whenever he was killing something or someone. The first shot had hurt, but it was not lethal, not at all... and compared to the second one, aimed to kill in a relatively long, slow, and very painful manner, it was nothing at all.

Danny was rapidly losing consciousness and his sanity too, for that matter. He sought his father, Albert Quinn; he sought his mother, Martha... no such luck. Whom he did find (between a small ape-like humanoid and a giant man-sized bat), was Helen Cutter, looking down at him with her trademark inscrutable look, her gaze as warm and humane as the wind.

"Helen... sorry... should've buried you properly..." Danny wheezed and all light faded in his eyes; he never felt the pliers that pulled out the revolver bullet from his wound, or the hands that prevented him from sprawling completely on the ground.

London, Present Time (The ARC building)

James Lester was feeling morose and the beginnings of something suspiciously like a middle-age crisis spring up. At times like these he really felt regretful that he remained working in the ARC and did not just up and leave...

Well no, he could not have left, not for a long while, not if he wanted to remain working in the ministry and not just quit. Admittedly, he had enough money to live the rest of his life comfortably enough...but that just was not him, not yet.

When Burton came along, with all of his power and influence, James could have left and be easily transferred to another branch, to let Philip have the free rein of the ARC, but he did not. That was just wrong...and Lester had to admit that he was enjoying working in the ARC a bit too much to just up and submit to the minister's pressure... and now he was back where he had started, at square one. Either continue working the ARC, or just quit.

"Decisions, decisions," Lester muttered crossly, when the phone on his desk rang. "Who is it?" he asked, sounding relatively cross.

It was the hospital. They had a man in a very poor shape – shot several times, one shot apparently almost fatal.

And apparently, he was one of Lester's employees.

"Jess," Lester spoke to the ARC's team organizer, "contact Anderson and the others. Tell them, that as soon as they are done with the time anomaly, to come and meet me at the hospital-"

"Sir, they're not responding – something is wrong," Jess turned to face Lester, clearly worried.

"I see," Lester frowned. In reality, he did not see anything, but the odds of something going wrong were more against the ARC than in its favor. "Then get me an armored escort to the hospital with me, and keep an eye and ear for the field team. If this state of affairs continues, send another armed force to help them, or pick them up, or something else – use your discretion!"

"Yes sir!" Jess replied, sounding completely serious for once. "I'm on it!"

Meanwhile

"Becker, you're okay? Becker!"

"Abby, I'm alive," Becker growled. "How about you? And the others?"

"I'm fine," Abby muttered, "because you got the worst of the blast. How are you feeling?"

"Poorly," Becker admitted. "Hurt all over. Do not really want to move. How about the others?"

"Um, you'll have to move – you're lying on top of me, and I really don't want to move you if you're hurt-"

"Oh." Becker finally looked up from whatever – or rather, whomever – he was lying on top of. "I didn't realize where I was."

"And we'll laugh, or cry, or whatever about that later," Abby said matter-of-factly. "Right now, can you move?"

"Yes," Becker hissed, as one of his legs and his lower back pulsed with pain. "Jess?" he spoke into his comm.-link as Abby got on her feet and looked around, while Becker himself felt only strong enough to sit on the pavement, now largely dismantled.

"Becker?" Even on the comm.-link Jess sounded very worried. "Are you all right?"

"No," Becker replied curtly. "Ethan's back; he rigged this entire street with explosives; I'm alive, Abby's okay, but the others – we have no contact with them yet."

There was a pause, very uncharacteristic of the normally loquacious Jess, so even Becker, normally rather thick-skinned, felt compelled to ask:

"You okay?"

"...Yes," the team operator replied. "Mr. Lester told me to send you armed back-up-"

"And contact the police. Ethan, apparently, got rid of Quinn, and is packing explosives, possibly firearms, and I do not know what else," Becker added. "Also, tell Mr. Lester-"

"He's not at the Centre," Jess said, miserably. "He's been called to a hospital for some reason – I didn't quite follow it."

"Fine. Contact Lester and get him up to date – somehow," Becker exhaled. "Please."

"Got it," Jess replied, sounding precise for once and turned to contacting Lester at her end.

"Well?" Becker switched his attention to Abby. "Anything? Anyone?"

"No," Abby gulped, her face paler than her hair for once. "Becker, what do we do?"

But regrettably, Becker had nothing to tell her.

_End Part 3_


	4. Chapter 4

**The Return of Ethan (part 4)**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

"Well, I'm here, what's going on?" probably wasn't the best opening line James Lester could come up with, but the sight of police officers – the last people James Lester expected to see – was probably responsible for this mangled introduction.

"Mr. Lester?" fortunately, the speaker was not a police officer, but a nurse. "I'm nurse Cassidy; I spoke to you on the phone."

"Yes, I recognize your voice," James turned to face the woman. "I'm James Lester-" he gave his ID to the police officers, "-now what is going on?"

"Well, sir, about half an hour ago the patient was brought here by his companion, who told us to contact you, since Mr. Quinn is your employee," nurse Cassidy explained helpfully.

"Mmm, and did this companion give you his name?" James Lester asked, suspicions of the gone and unlamented Ethan Dombrowski raising their heads.

"No sir, the lady didn't give me her name, though I assumed that she's his wife – they're about the same age, and got that same outdoors weathered look," was the reply.

Lester felt his heart sinking in his chest: there were not too many women with weathered faces in the lives of the ARC, and he seriously doubted that Ethan, or Patrick, or whatever his name was, got himself a sex-change operation to confuse them. "So where is she?" he asked, suspecting that he already knew the answer to his question.

"Gone, sir," the nurse confessed. "She got out of my sight for just a moment and poof! She vanished! I don't know how she did and why!"

James Lester was really grateful for being such an experienced politician, schooled in holding his facial expressions, for otherwise he would have given himself away for sure: he was now certain who that woman was and how she managed to slip away unnoticed, even without her personal time anomaly manifestation device – she was that good.

"Sir?" a police officer spoke up. "Since the man is supposedly your employee, can you please take a look at him for identification?"

"Certainly, lead on," Lester nodded graciously. "Where is he?"

/ / /

"Oof! Ouch! Where are we?" Emily exclaimed as darkness finally retreated – sort of – before the flickering lights of a flare. "Connor, Abby! Is everyone all right?"

"No, we most definitely are not," Matt Anderson answered instead. "That explosive trap of Ethan's caused a collapse of the street, and we fell. Connor and I spent all this time digging you and ourselves out, and there're no signs of Abby or Becker."

"Of course, there aren't any signs or sights at all, since we're in unilluminated sewers, but you get the picture," Connor added, miserably. Even in the flickering light of the flare (it was almost halfway done too), Emily could see that both of her companions were covered in copious amounts of dry blood, and her own state of condition felt just as bad. Plus, there seemed to be something wrong with the way as to how she viewed the flare in general, but that could wait...

"What do we do now?" Emily asked softly instead. "Can we contact Jess or anyone else?"

"No, all of this junk is blocking Matt's comm.-link, and ours got lost in the explosion," Connor confessed. "I'm thinking that we should wait here until the back-up arrives to dig us out, and Matt appears to be agreeing with me. What's your take?"

Emily paused, apparently deep in thought. "I don't think that I'll be able to go very far if we start walking," she confessed. "I feel tired, weak..."

"Emily!"

/ / /

"Emily!" Matt's panicked cry – perhaps the first one since he learned of his father's fatal illness – spread far through the empty sewers of this London sector. It reached the ears of one Ethan Dombrowski, causing him to pause and to think.

Ethan was not a man dedicated to thinking: nowadays his entire life seemed to be focused on solving his problems with a final solution. Even the foolishly persistent Danny Quinn ended up 'solved' in this matter – in one of the more prolonged and cruel ways that Ethan was able to create on the go.

"Idiot like father and monstrous hypocrite like mother," Ethan muttered under his breath. "Now what to do now?"

In general, Ethan's idea was clear and straightforward: to spread death and anarchy in London and anywhere, any_when _else from now on. In case of Matt Anderson and Lady Emily Merchant, however, Ethan's feelings were more vivid, more personal: they had dared to frustrate his plans, made him feel vulnerable and human – that was something Ethan would not tolerate.

On the other hand, Matt and Emily and any of their companions were currently hurt, weakened, vulnerable... perfect to be shot down by an Armalite or by a thrown explosive missile, yes...

Tzink!

Ethan stiffened and froze, as a giant insect – longer than he was tall and quite a bit bulkier crawled past him, naturally eyeless and blind, an uninvited guest from the future.

But though it had no eyes, its tremorsense was perfect, as Ethan confirmed once again, silently observing the giant vermin crawling in the direction where Matt and Emily were stuck at.

"Excellent! This will solve my problem for me quite nicely," Ethan muttered to himself and went on his way, confident that things will turn out his way for once.

He was wrong.

_End Part 4_


	5. Chapter 5

**The Return of Ethan (part 5)**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

Once upon a time, when James Lester used to be younger, closer to the age of Becker or Connor than his current age, he had tasted some sort of a foreign cheese, Asiago-something, and received a shock of his life, and not in a good way. Now, looking at an unconscious man lying in a hospital bed with an IV-drip attacked to his arm, and his stomach covered in post-surgical operation bandages, he experienced yet another shock that was even more powerful than the previous one.

"Yes, that's Danny Quinn," he heard himself say. "Hired to work at the Anomaly Research Center as the field team leader in April 2009, left due to personal family issues in June of the same year. I got the paperwork back at the center, if you are interested in it. Are you?"

"Purely for the protocol's sake, sir" the police officer confessed. "Danny was one of us; between us, he was missed on the force, and when now that he's here – identified. Still, the paperwork must be done, and your papers are a part of it, I confess. So, if we could go to your place of work and look at them-"

There was a call on James's cell. "Yes, what is it, Jess?" he said as patiently as he could. "I've got an emergency on my hands-"

"So does the field team," Jess replied in a similar tone of voice. "Ethan is back, he launched an ambush, the team needs back-up ASAP."

"Send whom you can from at the ARC," Lester said firmly and looked at his police interlocutor. "Officer, while you're here, I believe that I sent a message to the police in the winter of 2011 regarding a dangerous criminal, Ethan Dombrowski."

"Yes, and we've been searching for him ever since - probably," the officer nodded, wary of the sudden shift in the discussion.

"Good, because my field team have just encountered him, and he's got explosives at the least. Could your force back-up mine?"

"I see what can be done, sir," the police officer did not waver.

"Good, and while you're doing that, send someone with me to the Center, to get the paperwork and all."

"Yes sir!"

/ / /

"Emily? Emily! Emily!" Matt practically shouted, as he looked at the prone woman. "Are you all right?"

Connor opened his mouth and closed it, thinking better of it. He turned around, lit-up their last flare and looked into the sewer's gloom. He did not like what he saw there, either.

"Matt?" he called out in a shaking voice. "We got company!"

"What?" the man from the future whirled around. "Not now, Connor..." he trailed away as a pair of oversized insect antennae, attached to the rest of the oversized insect, emerged from the darkness.

"Guess when we've destroyed the nest of those insects we missed one or two," Connor said, as he retreated to where Matt and Emily were.

"Looks like it," Matt agreed. "This specimen looks like a juvenile, must've been away from the main nest when we burned it." He picked up a piece of debris that was vaguely spear-like and threw it at the insect, aped by Connor. (Emily was unconscious.)

Sadly, this giant burrowing insect may have been just a juvenile, but its' body armor was strong enough to withstand the barrage of missiles that Matt and Connor unleashed upon it. Of course, even if they had their weapons at hand and the latter were working, this would not have made any difference: these insects were EMP- and bullet-proof at their best.

"Matt," Connor wheezed as it became even _more_ obvious that the giant insect was going to win this face-off, even if tiredness and blood loss were not playing a factor, as well. "I just want you to know," he coughed, "that-"

And then there was light, as a hole opened into the roof of the chamber, letting in sunshine and fresh air. The juvenile giant insect was blind, but it could sense light somehow, and it turned to face it, its' mouthparts clacking open and closed in irritation. Consequently, when a missile was thrown into its' face it landed right into the opened mouthparts – before they closed.

The resulting explosion happened _inside_ the insect, and while its' outsides were tough enough to resist even regular bullets, let alone a stun grenade, its' insides... weren't.

"If I knew that _that_ was going to be the prettiest sight in my entire life," Connor began, when he saw Abby – apparently largely unhurt – looking down at him and the others through the opening. "I would've forgotten all about Abby, really!"

Upon hearing one of Connor's clumsily constructed jokes (i.e. his usual), Abby burst into tears.

_End Part 5_


	6. Chapter 6

**The Return of Ethan (Epilogue)**

_Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™._

When Jess Parker saw Becker and the others return to the ARC in various states of hurt, she was aghast. Abby appeared largely unhurt, except for broken several toes and long, but shallow wounds on her back, arse, and thighs; Becker, Matt and Connor were also had long and shallow wounds, but also had to take tetanus shots; and Emily was the same as the men, but had a bandage around her face.

"What has happened?" Jess exclaimed weakly.

"As we have explained to the nice police officers, Ethan Dombrowski. That's who happened," Becker growled. "Apparently he got rid of Danny, and has come back for revenge... or something."

"But why? We meant him no harm!" Jess almost wailed: last time Becker and she had confronted Dombrowski on their own, they almost ended up blown up – and this time Becker and others _had been_ blown up, basically speaking.

"That's because he doesn't care. He's insane," Becker exhaled. "Some people in the army were like that...eventually came to a bad end...but Ethan had skipped that stage altogether and is now aiming for self-destruction – only question now is how many people are going to get hurt because of him."

"That's... that's just inhuman," Jess whispered, quietly. "Dr. Burton, at least, he wanted to make the world a better place..."

"Yes; pity that he was Helen's puppet all the same." Connor, after receiving his tetanus shots, was a rather miserable person and unconsciously tried to share his misery with others (even though they were just as miserable as he was).

"Indeed?" James Lester raised his eyebrow and joined the discussion. "The last time I saw Mr. Quinn – when he was going to follow his brother to the Pliocene, that is – he claimed the Dr. Cutter was as dead a dodo, or something like that, basically. I believe that he knew what he was talking about, you know?"

"Really?" Connor and others exchanged thoughtful looks. "That's interesting, Mr. Lester. Danny was never a liar, and I really wish we could talk to him-"

"Well, you'll be able, if he recovers," Lester said flatly. "While you were away on your excursion with Mr. Ethan, I received a call from a hospital, asking me to come over. I arrived, and there was Danny, heavily sedated; only operated, even in worse shape than Emily."

"**What**?"

"Right now, he's in the hospital, under observations of police and medical staff. He, apparently, has some friends left in the Force, and generally speaking, the Force was not very amused, and after Ethan's little firework display, it is amused even less. Consequently, it'll be working in tandem with us for the time being, until Ethan is caught or killed." The last words were said with distaste but firmly, Lester having clearly resolved whatever moral quandaries the choice of shooting Ethan on sight had been brought forth. "Any questions?"

There was a general silence – the police force was not the only organization that wanted Ethan to be gone for good by now.

"No?" James Lester asked to be doubly sure. "Very well. Then off you go to the medical wing, and then you will be briefed about our new co-operation with the police in a greater detail. The minister," for a brief moment Lester looked much more feral than the usual, "has agreed to permit this co-operation without much argument, so no problem from that quarter, by the way. For now – dismissed!"

...As Jess helped Becker and others get to the center's medical wing, James Lester let his confident mask slip away. The bullet in Danny's leg was identified as belonging to a Lee-Enfield rifle Mk III, whose production was stopped in the early 1950s, after WWII (Becker was able to identify it only because he had written his thesis upon it and similar WWI weapons). The explosives used by Ethan earlier today consisted not only of self-made nail bombs, but also of discarded and _mostly_ empty WWII Soviet-style flamethrower fuel tanks for the extra bang and flame. Together, this could mean that Ethan had a time anomaly leading to the WWII era or some time nearby, and that was just too disturbing to think.

"If we end up invaded by the bloody SS that'll be the icing on the cake," Lester muttered.

He was wrong.

/ / /

Not unlike James Lester, Ethan Dombrowski wasn't usually wrong, but this was one of those times, as he looked over the remains of the futuristic insect from a distance: not only black-clad armed forces of the ARC were guarding the scene of the incursion, but London's police officers as well. Ethan had come and gone from pre WWI Victorian England to its 21st version, but in a certain light he had not gone anywhere at all: once again the police were after him, and the differences between them and their Victorian age counterparts were largely surface-deep and superficial.

"Police officers," he whispered delightfully to himself (from a safe distance), "it begins again. Soon, it will be as it was once before, soon it will all be – home."

_End_


End file.
